


great things which will come

by surexit



Category: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:30:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit/pseuds/surexit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years after the events of the book, Marco is beginning to think differently about The Rat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	great things which will come

“- and remember that Baron Wysirsk will be expecting to trip you up over the trade issue. He’s still hoping to expand into Beltrazo, but as it stands…” Marco heard The Rat let the last sentence lie, and looked towards his aide-de-camp from his own position in a comfortable armchair by the fire. The Rat himself was at his desk, close to the windows that in the daytime would look out over a Melzarr that over the last seven years had been rebuilt to something like its old graceful beauty, and now showed nothing but the dark and the stars. 

“Rat?” he said as their eyes met. Jeremy Ratcliffe’s street urchin days were long behind him, and no one else called The Rat The Rat anymore, but in the prince’s private chambers and in the quiet intimacy of these evening conversations, each man called the other by his boyhood name.

“Nothing,” The Rat said, somewhat rapidly, sliding from Samavian into English. “There’s only one more item, and then you can rest.”

“Go on,” Marco said, propping his chin on his hand and watching the twisted figure turn back to his papers. Still not a soldier he, and he would never walk without crutches or stand up straight, but there was something pleasing to Marco’s eyes about the lines of The Rat, the muscles in his forearms that Marco knew had been fought for twice as hard as the muscles of any other man, the lean strength of his throat and the slender, decisive hands. Lately, Marco had been noticing these things, and others, more and more, and he knew why.

As Marco watched, The Rat swallowed convulsively and said, “I’ve been asked by a small delegation to broach the subject of marriage.” He was speaking Samavian again. He was rigid about using the language of the country whenever he spoke to Marco the prince rather than Marco the friend. Marco said nothing, and The Rat went on. “I’ll give you all the names, of course, but the main suggestion came from Lord Rastka, I believe – he didn’t speak, but the others looked to him for guidance. I suggested it seemed more a matter for His Majesty, and was given to understand that he had said the same thing in reverse when it came in front of him.”

“Of course,” Marco said calmly. “He wouldn’t want anything done without my knowing. Not that I would’ve minded, you know that.” 

“I know,” The Rat said. “But it’s the kind of thing you might’ve minded.” He was speaking in English again, and it surprised Marco. It was unlike The Rat to slip like this. “I don’t believe they were trying to be underhanded, at any rate, it was more that they thought approaching your father was the proper way of things. But they should have known better, he treats you almost as an equal. Lord Rastka, at least, should have known to come to me – to you first.”

“What else did they say?” Marco said in English. “They can’t just have demanded marriage.”

“No, of course not, and it wasn’t a demand. More like they wanted me to mention to you that now was about the right time. They didn’t seem in a frightful rush.” He smiled, something uncertain about it. “I got the impression that Lord Rastka had a daughter he might be presenting at court in the New Year. All very subtly mentioned, of course.”

Marco snorted a little with laughter. “Sly old dog,” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to discuss with my father. You can tell them that the message has been received. And find some way to indicate to Rastka that I’m not completely opposed to the idea, without tying me into anything? He’s always been a loyal friend, right from the beginning.”

He was watching The Rat’s strange face as he said this, and he saw its customary lines and angles and points settle into something even sharper than usual. The deep eyes seemed to deepen and darken, even as The Rat opened his mouth and said, in Samavian again, “It will be done, sir.” It was the standard acknowledgement of an order received, but Marco fancied there was unhappiness in The Rat’s tone. The thought made his heart jump, joyously and secretly.

He had discussed his new feelings, or, more precisely, the new aspect to his old feelings, with his father only a week ago. At first, he had approached the subject obliquely, and something in him had quailed a little at the thought of opening this secret up. Samavia, where the Church, isolated for several hundred years and battered by atrocity after atrocity, had been forced for survival’s sake to focus more on love and peace and less on sin and hellfire, was a much less hateful country in this regard than any in Europe. Still, Marco, for all he had been taught to believe himself a Samavian from birth, had not grown up in that little country, and neither had his father or his father’s father. He knew how this thing was seen in much of Europe, and he could not know which way his father would fall, even as he trusted in his father as he always had. If his father said this was wrong, as Marco had heard preached more than once in churches across the continent, then Marco would heed his wisdom. His father was still his idol, his hero and his god. A man of twenty cannot avoid being aware that fathers sometimes fail, but Marco’s never would.

As always with his father, he need never have worried. There was a flicker of what Marco had learned to recognise as concern on King Ivor I’s brow (and how strange it was to be old enough to identify the times when his father was not as sure as he seemed!) as he said, “You must still marry, of course,” but when Marco had indicated he understood and agreed, the king only nodded, and said, “Beloved, the most important part of Order has always seemed to me the last part. Hate not, fear not, love. You and I both know Jeremy is a more than worthy companion, if he feels the same. And I charge you, Marco, be careful with him.”

Marco nodded solemnly. He knew why his father said that. The Rat was stronger than anyone he knew, but it was a strength which covered bitter wounds, both inside and outside, and he was before all else a clever and indispensable servant of the Crown of Samavia.

A clever and indispensable servant of the Crown of Samavia who, unless Marco had missed his guess, was at the current moment less than sanguine in discussing Marco’s inevitable marriage. Marco could not think of too many reasons for that, if one discounted the idea that The Rat was treasonously hoping that Marco would never reproduce, and The Rat would die before entertaining a treasonous thought.

“Rat,” he said, slowly. As always, he spoke calmly and with forethought. He chose English, because it was no less comfortable to him than Samavian and a good deal more comfortable for The Rat. “I must ask you something.”

“Yes?” The Rat said. He seemed apprehensive, as one might if one suddenly fears that one has betrayed a secret. His pinched face was more pinched, his high voice slightly higher.

“Are you in love with me?”

There was a short pause. “I love you, of course, your highness,” The Rat said, very carefully. Marco had been raised a Samavian, and he had _still_ feared this thing, until his father had let him relax. The Rat had been raised an Englishman.

“No,” he said, and he did not show his impatience. “You heard the question, Rat. Don’t worry, the answer will not go outside these walls.”

There was another silence. “Am I commanded to answer?” The Rat said.

That brought Marco up short. He would never command such a thing, and The Rat surely – surely! – knew that. He looked at the well-known face, and saw a terrible misery lurking in The Rat’s sunken eyes. “Of course not,” he said. And then all of a sudden, the cause for The Rat’s hesitation came upon him and he said, “Oh! I am sorry, that was unfair! I should have started with this: I am in love with you.”

The Rat went red, and then white, and then red again. Marco sprung to his feet, alarmed at the extremity of emotion that was twisting the strangely-lined face, but The Rat held up a hand, warding him off as he approached the desk. “Don’t,” he said, voice harsh. “Give me a moment.” Marco waited, obediently still. Eventually, The Rat raised his head and stared straight ahead through the windows and into the darkness. “In that case,” he said, and his voice wavered even as he tried to keep it calm, “the answer is yes.”

Marco took a hesitant step forwards. The Rat rose, supporting himself on the table and chair, and looked up at Marco a little defiantly, as if to say, _Do you see me, do you see this?_ Marco had been a tall youth when they met, and was an even taller man, broad and strong and as beautiful as his father was and as the Lost Prince Ivor had been. The Rat came barely to his shoulder, thin and crippled. His legs were not as small and crooked as they had once been, but they were still moulded oddly, and still could not support him alone, and his back still bowed out in a way it should not. Marco stared back with his own defiance, and reached out a hand to cup the odd hunch of The Rat’s shoulder, feeling the twisted bones under his fingers. The Rat breathed out audibly, and something of the tension slid from his body; he sagged between his two braced arms.

Marco brought his other hand to touch The Rat’s cheek, to turn and tilt his head a little until it was in the right position. There had been no shortage of girls willing to kiss the prince in the last few years, and he knew he was good at this, just as surely as he knew that no one had kissed The Rat, ever, unless his mother had kissed him before she died, and that was many years ago. He bent down and brushed his lips over The Rat’s, which were parted as The Rat gasped anxiously for breath. Marco pulled back a little. “It’s all right,” he said, softly. “Can you hold yourself? Lean on me.” The Rat’s mouth firmed at the idea that he was incapable of _anything_ , as Marco had known it would, but he did lean a bit of his weight onto Marco’s arm, which Marco wrapped more firmly around The Rat’s malformed shoulders. He kissed The Rat more firmly this time, and surprised a small sound out of him when he touched The Rat’s lips with his tongue.

“Sorry,” he said. He suspected The Rat knew he wasn’t sorry at all. “It’s something they do in…” He was not sure where the girl he’d learnt it from had come from, actually – he’d met her in Germany, but the ball they’d both attended had been full of dignitaries from all over, and she could have been anyone’s daughter. Her German, like his, had been unaccented.

“I know what it is,” The Rat said, using the tone he used when he suspected he was the butt of a joke. “They do it everywhere.”

“Oh,” Marco said. “I didn’t know. Last year was the first time I did it. I thought you’d never -”

“I’ve never,” The Rat said, looking at Marco’s chest instead of his face. “Obviously. But I’ve seen it done.”

“Where?” 

“England,” The Rat said. “Germany. Samavia. France. Everywhere. It’s not that shocking. I just didn’t think you’d want…”

Marco shook his head. “What did you think I meant, that I was in love with you but would never want to touch you?”

“Look at us,” The Rat said. “Look at _you_.”

“I don’t want to,” Marco said reasonably. “I want to look at you. I’m not attracted to myself.”

That made The Rat smile, small and sweet. “You’ve lost your mind, your Highness.”

“I think,” Marco said, leaning in to speak the words straight into The Rat’s finely-shaped ear, “that you’re terribly good-looking. I acknowledge that not everyone sees what I see, but they’re _wrong_.” As he said it, he realised how strongly he felt it.

The Rat shivered a little. “Well, I know you’re not a liar,” he said. 

“No,” Marco agreed.

“And I know you’ve probably thought about this.”

“Of course,” Marco said. He thought about everything. So did The Rat. It was one of the things which made them so comfortable with each other.

The Rat nodded. “I’ll still tell them the message has been delivered, of course. And try to get the message to Rastka without tangling you in anything.”

“I know you will,” Marco said, stroking a hand down the strange curve of The Rat’s spine. He felt The Rat shudder. “You always do what’s needed.”

“And I’ll… I know you’ve thought, Marco, but I need to think.”

“I know,” Marco said lowly. He felt The Rat’s movements as he re-braced himself, and didn’t step away until he was sure The Rat was steady. When he did, The Rat looked at him, clear-eyed, for a moment or two.

“Pass me my crutches,” he said, fondness in his voice. He waited until Marco had done so, and then swung himself away from the desk to stand near Marco again. “And sleep well, please.” He paused, and then added, in Samavian, “Beloved.”

Marco could not resist touching him again, a brush of fingers against his cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning for that meeting, dearest one,” he said in Samavian.

The Rat groaned. “I’d almost forgotten. _Please_ remember about Baron Wysirsk, Marco.”

“Sleep well,” Marco said, and The Rat grinned at him, suddenly, joyous and carefree, and made his way out of the apartments, the crutches moving more lightly and easily than Marco had ever seen them.


End file.
